The sponge is then ready to absorb flavorful
cooking liquids, and has a chewier, meatier
texture.
An Early Description of Tofu
One of the earliest European accounts of
soybean curd is Friar Domingo
Navarrete’s, which dates from the 17th
century. He called it
the most usual, common, and cheap sort of
food all China abounds in, and which all in
that empire eat, from the Emperor to the
meanest Chinese; the Emperor and great
men as a dainty, the common sort as
necessary sustenance. It is called Teu Fu,
that is paste of kidney beans. I did not see
how they made it. They drew the milk out
of the kidney beans, and turning it, make
great cakes of it like cheeses, as big as a
large sieve, and five or six fingers thick.
All the mass is as white as the very snow,
to look to nothing can be finer...Alone it is